I hope we will have some downtime after breakfast but Harrison wants to take us to see the Maasai village. He insists. Pami doesn’t want to go; she has heard from fellow volunteers in Maseno that it is an undignified performance by the tribe’s people that culminates in an embarrassing interaction with the tourists that compels them to pay up. I ask Harrison if it is included in the fee for the safari and he says no but that the money goes to the village children’s school. He makes us feel guilty, so we decide to go, but once we get there he leaves us high and dry, drives off, and tells us he’ll be back in an hour. It is more like two hours before he returns. He does this every chance he gets during the week we are with him and I can’t say that I blame him. He must be pretty uncomfortable with the whole guide-client shtick. I know I am.
Visiting the Maasai Village is really a very informative cultural experience. The Maasai are arguably most people’s archetype for tribal Kenya and they seem willing to play up their reputation as fierce, proud warriors. The tribespeople claim to subsist on a diet of meat, blood, and milk that they occasionally supplement with a mixture of milk fermented with ashes and cow urine. They admit to practicing both male and female circumcision despite repeated intervention by global human rights organizations which strive to put an end to the rituals. The men in their colorful costumes, complete with traditional hand-carved signature ball- headed clubs, obviously cater to the tourism trade. We learn, however, that many tribespeople also now leave the Mara to attend school and to work as guides, guards, or some even as doormen at lodges and hotels.
I feel uneasy strolling around the huts of families on display like circus attractions, so I buy some trinkets. Pami and I have a number of questions for Dennis, the tribal chief’s son and our interpreter. We ask him about all we’ve recently heard: female circumcision, rampant AIDS in Kenya, having multiple wives, and the practice of drinking the milk and blood mixture—you know, the usual. He confirms everything. Before we are allowed to leave, the appointed Maasai dance troupe insists on performing a cultural demonstration for us, complete with the astonishingly high vertical jumping they are famous for. Standing pencil straight with their arms stiff at their sides, the villagers begin bouncing off the balls of their feet gaining increased altitude with each successive recoil until they are springing sometimes as much as six feet off the ground. Pami and I are adorned with traditional beaded wedding necklaces and ceremonial animal-skin hats, pulled into the circle, and forced to prance around imitating their dance steps. It is pretty embarrassing but they have every right to take a jab at us—tit for tat. Then we give them money. Pami explains that this is the standard drill throughout Kenya. The locals are all poor and they both require and request donations. In this particular instance, though, we also are the beneficiaries of a teaching moment, share a cultural experience with them, and are able to support the Masai children’s education. After we leave the village, we embark upon another late afternoon sunset drive into the Mara, stunning yet again, before having to down another excessive buffet meal.
The next morning, following our final drive through Masai Mara, we depart for Lake Naivasha. At this point, we begin to worry that perhaps our safari might get monotonous. Pami had mentioned to me in one of her most recent e-mails just prior to my arrival that she hoped she wasn’t “Africa’d out” by the time I got there. She has been having such a different experience prior to my arrival and it is easy for me to understand how the tourist gig might be rubbing her the wrong way, insulting her new Kenyan sensibilities. But she is happy on safari. We are so grateful to be together and the adventure is still so wide open that I guess we are up for anything. . . almost.
Again, the drive to Lake Naivasha is horrendous, but this one is not as long. Harrison has this annoying habit of pulling over at designated stops, so that in order to access a restroom we have to pass through markets crawling with aggressive hawkers trying to sell their crafts. Pami tells me that actual toilets are a real commodity here. I say, “A commode-ity?” and she snickers without even rolling her eyes. She has missed me. We ask Harrison not to take us through the tourist traps anymore but he says that they are the only safe places to stop, and then he tells us the tale of the massacred tourists.
Apparently a group from Holland got fed up with the pre-arranged stops and ordered their guide to just park along the side of the road so that they could pee. A band of outlaws used this opportunity to jump the bunch; robbing, raping and murdering them all. Pami asks how the thugs knew that the tour group was making an unscheduled stop and Harrison explains that many thieves work in cahoots with shady guides who radio ahead to alert the thieves to the detour. I am quite alarmed but Pami simply shrugs. She has had previous experience with this form of local harassment. Nonetheless, she will later ask around and won’t be able to find any corroboration for this particularly gruesome tale. Whether the story is true or merely a scare tactic to get us to shop, it doesn’t matter. We gladly utilize the funky bathrooms, becoming adept at politely stiff-arming the front line of vendors, like Hollywood starlets charging through paparazzi.
We finally make it to the Lake Naivasha Country Club, again in the eleventh hour and just in time for the last lunch seating. The buildings are charmingly frumpy and the grounds are lush. The property reminds me of a small Catskills-like resort where my family might have vacationed when I was a child. In the afternoon, Pami and I want to go to an island in the center of Lake Naivasha, so we finagle a voyage across this exotic body of water. There are official water tours run by the country club, but instead my wife and I wander down to the dock and snag a snoozing guy with a leaky boat to navigate us to the island. For a much-reduced rate, this `````local agrees to ferry us across, drop us off, and come back to collect us in a couple of hours.
This island is the site where many of the Out of Africa scenes were filmed. Pami and I recognize the country club complex from the movie as well. The animals used in the movie were transplanted to the island during filming and were left there after the project was finished. The second we reach shore, an aggressive local fellow, clearly intent on being our guide, corners us. Pami and I assure him that we just want to hike around for a short time and don’t need a chaperone. He responds that normally he would insist because it isn’t safe for lone hikers if there are Cape buffalo on the island. I believe him as I have heard from Harrison that more people are killed in Africa by Cape buffalo than all the other animals combined. These beasts are reported to be massively strong and will charge at anything, including a safari vehicle. However, once we slip our would-be guide the requisite tip in spite of our not making use of his services, he is perfectly content to let us to march on un-escorted. But he is adamant that he is allowing us to proceed alone only because there are certain to be no Cape buffalo ashore, as the lake presently is too deep for the animals to cross over from the mainland.
Here on the island Pami and I are able to wander freely among the herds of wild creatures, unlike when we are on safari, where we are absolutely forbidden to leave the safety of our vehicle. We ramble for hours amidst hundreds of wild animals. I stand right up next to a full-grown female giraffe that stumbles upon us on the trail, her head poking through the treetops above us like some prehistoric creature. It is by far the most authentic wildlife experience of our safari thus far, but we are still seeking the elusive hippopotamus. On the far side of the island, we come onto a marshy shore. I hear some rustling in the high reeds, so I grab the camera and bushwhack into the thick brush. As I part the reeds, I spot what looks like the backside of a hippo. Snatching a branch, I poke him gently on the rump so that he’ll look at me and I’ll be able to snap a cool head shot. As the beast turns around, I am shocked to see that it is instead a humongous Cape buffalo flailing its massive snorting head, and glaring with furious blood-red eyes. I bolt out of the bog yelling at Pami to “Run away! Save yourself!” I imagine that the monster is tight on my tail fixing to make me one more dead-tourist statistic. But no buffalo emerges from the bush. Slightly